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Okay, we’ve been hearing all morning about Disney acquiring Marvel for $4 billion but what does it mean?

At this point, it’s all speculation.  Marvel EIC Joe Quesada says the Disney/Marvel relationship will be similar to the one the Mouse has with Pixar and that, creatively,  nothing is changing.

So, I’m going to refrain from making any guesses as to what’s going to happen in regards to characters or movies or anything like that.

What I will do is make a list of possible pros and cons from this deal.

• PRO: Marvel has corporate sponsorship. Marvel, at least theoretically, has a reliable source of funds, enabling them to produce more titles, higher quality books and increase creator pay.
• CON: Marvel has corporate sponsorship. The downside of this is that executives at Disney could interfere with creative decisions. I don’t know how possible that is, if what Quesada says is accurate. So far as I know, Disney lets Pixar do their thing and does nothing more than cash the checks.  I do know that Time-Warner has mucked with a few things over at DC (coughBatwomancough), but I can’t really speak as to what will happen with this deal.
• PRO: Marvel is now owned by a movie studio. If Disney/Marvel gets the Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, X-Men, etc. rights back from the various studios, we can have a shared movie universe, similar to what DC could have.
• CON: I doubt that will happen, however. From what I can tell, once Marvel’s deal with Paramount expires (after five more movies– for those of you counting, that’s Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, the Avengers and one more) and then Disney– or more likely, one of it’s branches, will produce Marvel’s adaptations.
• PRO: A thought I just had: maybe Marvel Studios will become its own branch, similar to Miramax or Dreamworks?
• PRO: A Muppet Babies/X-Babies crossover. If BOOM! agrees to it (and why wouldn’t they?).
• CON: Howard The Duck even less likely to revert to his original look.
• PRO: Joe Quesada can’t say a word about DC using corporate dollars.
• CON: Future Marvel/DC crossovers (unlikely as they already were) may have an extra hurdle/lightyear of legal wrangling.
• PRO: Disney is one of the gay-friendliest companies in the world, which is good news for Peter David and X-Factor.